My Black Dragon IPA bottle label design

After some further tinkering using The Gimp (open source, free alternative to Photoshop) on several label designs recently I have finally settled on this one for my Black Dragon IPA. I'm still tweaking the recipe as far as the cold steeped malts but it's developed into a lovely, full beer. Not overly roasty and with some fragrant pineapple notes drifting into it now it's a few week old. I am putting the pineapple down to the Cascade.

Still waiting to hear back from Les Douanes (Customs) with regard to my initial start-up size requiring full warehouse keeper status or not. Although even if they say I don't have to, I think I will still register (it's free anyway) as it comes built in with the rights to sell (takeaway only) beer from the breweries location.

Reduced resolution and size for bandwidth and to fit on here.

And here's a bottle of the lovely stuff. I might have to crack one open in a couple of hours time. :)

The first brewday (I'll be swapping black malt for Carafa III) is here: allgrain homebrew Black IPA

A delicious experiment in Beer

I don't know why I decided to top up an almost finished pint of my Black IPA with my Summer Blonde Bitter the other night but I'm very pleased I did.

A malt and hop explosion, gorgeous colour, delicious, creamy and smooth bursting with goldings and cascade. Love it! I now want to try to create a new recipe based on a merging of the two individual beers recipes. The mix was about 5:1 blonde to black,

Probably easier to brew separately and mix before bottling, not sure how to calculate the actual abv of two mixed together.

Black IPA Summer Blonde hybrid. A happy accident.

Pint of all grain Black IPA

Finally a photo that isn't blurred to shitrags!!! This was the brewday: All grain Black IPA

Definitely black. With a light shone right through it, it's very dark red just glimpse-able at the edges. More burnt/roasted notes than I was hoping for but nice and not as much as you'd expect to look at it.

AG14 All Grain Black IPA - Black Dragon

I'm trying to get caught up with some brew day write ups to share so here's AG14, my first attempt at a controversially named Black IPA.

I've wanted to brew something using more American hops, this time to use up a bag of Cascade I've had for a while and some other odds and ends.

I ran this through qBrew an open source beer engine type brewing software for Linux.

Brewday 23rd April 2012

Target brew length: 20 litres
Target OG 1,074
Target FG 1,019
Target ABV 7.2%

Mash: 90 minutes
Boil: 90 minutes
Mash liquor: 15l
Total liquor: 35 (includes about 1.75l from the cold steep added to the boil)

Fermentables:
Pale malt (Maris Otter): 4.5kg
Munich Malt: 600g
Special B: 500g
Chocolate Malt: 100g
Pale Crystal: 250g
Torrified Wheat: 350g

Black malt: 500g cold steeped for 2 hours in 2 litres boiled and cooled water.

Note: Next time I'll use Carafa 3 as the finished brew did have slightly more roasted, burnt flavours than I'd wanted even with the cold steep of the back malt. I'll also use more hops.

Bittering Hops:
Target: 10g @ 90 mins - 9g @ 60mins
East Kent Golding: 11g @ 90 mins - 8g @ 60 mins
Northern Brewer: 5g @ 30 mins

Aroma Hops:
Cascade: 25g @ 10 mins - 32g @ flameout 80C steep for 30 mins

Cascade: 22g Dry hop added to secondary fermenter for 1 week before bottling.

Yeast:  Safale SO4 rehydrated and kicked of in a small starter of first run sweet wort boiled and cooled
Copper Finings: Protofloc - used a whole tablet as I wasn't impressed first time using just 1/4 tablet

The pics.

A bit of a grain user upper, Munich and Special B left over from AG13 Weissen

One of 2 carafes containing the cold steeped black malt extract

Adding hot liquor to the pre-heated mash tun

Doughing in

First runnings from the mash tun were pretty dark even before the cold steep was added.

Cold steeped black malt extract being added to the run off sweet wort before boiling.

Vigorous boil and the first bittering hops are in.

10 minutes from end of boil, chiller already in to sterilize in the boiling wort.

Lots of cold break crud settled on the base of the boiler as the hopped wort is run off to the fermenter

Pitching the SO4 starter @ 26C

The next morning. Water bath temp at 22C, hell of a fermentation

Crazy alien yeast head! It's Aliiiiiivvvvveeeee!!!!1!

I had to give the inside of the FV rim a good clean with a sterilized scraper before I could put the lid back on. It settled later that day but fermentation finally stopped around 1,022, 3 points above target FG.

I racked off to secondary and dry hopped for a week. Checking the gravity again before bottling and it was still at 1,022

I've calculated the finished beer to be 6.5% and it's tasting very good. As I wrote above though it does have a more burnt flavour than i was expecting so next time I'll definitely opt for the de-husked Carafa 3.

I'll try and get a decent photo of a pint of it this evening but I'm having a few blurry issues with my camera when it comes to photographing pints.

Crazy Yeast Head on my Black IPA

I still have to write up the brewday for the first batch of a Black IPA recipe I am working on but thought I'd post this piccy of the yeast head the morning after pitching. Update: here's the brew day for my all grain Black IPA.

Rehydrated Safale SO4 that I added 250ml of wort from the brewday to...

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!111!!!